Mostar, Mostar Anguished Woman ,Anguished Woman on a field of Words, The Stars That
Disappeared, The Man that Climbed out of a Hole, The Killing, continues my
present direction of narrative imagery; written and illustrated works - part of a book of
illustrated poems in progress.

Mostar, anguished woman

The gleaners came sweeping the fields of yesterday's grain planted to cover the years of rage

occasionally one would uncover part of a hand or foot nestled in a root of a twisted limb or the beets that were to be taken to market

the fields covered the broken limbs of faith and the holy ashes of rot

on the hill she appears on the slag heap of the righteous naked, her milk gone,her children gone, her womb empty

she gnaws at her flesh and bone as not to scream out she will be there until memory is gone.

The man who climbed
out of a hole

They watched at a distance unable or unwilling to get too close they thought perhaps we too might fall in

and what looked like a man half in and half out of a hole his head resting on his arm appearing not to move seemed to be frozen in place

they stood at a distance afraid to see his eyes were like bits of glass worn smooth pieces of wood and straw covered him he was the ground and the ground was he

his eyes blank and his body frozen as if he were spit upward as he tried to escape
from a depth only imagined by each of us as we silently watched

better not watch, better not think he is as still as the dead

at the end of the day the tide came in and filled the hole with all that was living and washed the sand away and washed the man away until there was nothing

nothing remained just the shells, the seaweed and the occasional crab that filled the hole.

Mostar

Darkness fell upon the fields seeping into them as a mist and into the forests and homes upon the crops and into the fruit and into the wombs of women and into their fruit and into the hearts of men into the rushing waters that form the streams and rivers into the rolling hills and crops that feed us into words forged and twisted like hot iron from blast furnaces for our boots the hob nailed boots so we wouldn't slip as we took aim when we climbed the hills and lived in holes among fields of corpses among the twisted and shattered limbs of trees and men

in the great mountains and ravines that hold the graves and unmarked sites on the rolling hills that hold flocks of sheep and goats the white walls of hill top stone houses celebrate with red bougainvillea pouring down from balconies covering the outrage embedded into the walls rolled hay dot the fields like shell casings

the once neatly ordered stone houses their roofs gone and beams exposed blackened from the flames, the walls shot away exposed what is now left a structure now disemboweled from a terminal disease the shame of it all

it covers the falling down stone houses and the graves of men it covers the fields and flowers in baskets by doors and the split firewood waiting to be used it covers the hills dotted with hay racks and rolled up hay covers the goats and sheep

it falls from the hilltops exploding upon impact shattering the lives of the living and once living they remembered and their children remembered their names become just memory now

in the early morning she said to me: "Did you see the stars last night, there were so many?" I went to the windowthe clouds had rolled in and covered the sky as the darkness fell upon us once again.

The sounds of morning

It can be the
silence before
things stir and unfold their music to bathe in the tender glow of the sun's first rays the morning light

it can be the
soft sounds of insect wings the rustle of leaves or the imperceptible movement of a flower to face the sun, if you listen

the flight of a
single bird, the flash of faded wing that settles among fallen leaves, with veins that trace the journey from seed to song to worm, and gathers in the last burning rays; the growing of
tree bark if you listen, takes years so does grief, take years

the silence when we have no more words or sounds to make when we listen to what still moves us into tears voices soft and forgiving, perhaps in time forgottenlike a tree that is scarred, covered with rings of bark and forgotten, we are scarred covered with time.